Largest 150 U.S. Ballet & Classically Based Companies & Financial Scope of the Industry

The following is Dance Data Project®’s fourth annual and most comprehensive study to date of the largest U.S. ballet companies. For the 2022 Report, the DDP research team produced rankings by size not only for the Largest 50 and Next 50, but also an Additional 50, thus ranking a total of 150 U.S. ballet companies. The Largest 150 U.S. Ballet & Classically Based Companies & Financial Scope of the Industry Report gives information on the aggregate expenditures of all three groups, demonstrating the considerable economic contribution of the classical dance economy, as well as the significant disparity in size between the largest few companies and the rest.
In DDP’s 2021 Largest 50 U.S. Ballet Companies & Scope of the Industry Report, we determined that while the Largest 50 totaled approximately $665,000,000 in operating expenditures, the Next 50 aggregated budgets comprise only 7% of that figure, demonstrating a notable disparity in resources favoring the few
largest companies.
We believe it is important to gather momentum in surveying and comprehending the entire landscape of ballet in the United States. This year’s Largest 150 U.S. Ballet & Classically Based Companies & Financial Scope of the Industry Report will be the first of DDP’s reports to reckon with the impact of COVID-19 on the performing arts in general, and dance in particular.
This year’s Largest 150 U.S. Ballet & Classically Based Companies & Financial Scope of the Industry Report covers the budgetary impact of the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, creating a rolling wave of shutdowns towards the end of the 2019-2020 season and continuing to affect the beginning of the 2020-2021 season. As of November 2020, Dance/NYC’s research indicated that 47% of independent dancer workers were unemployed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics as reported by Dance/USA, dancer/choreographer unemployment overall in the industry rose to 45.6% for the period 2019-2020. As documented by Dance/USA, 75% of independent dance workers filed for unemployment and 44% of independent dance workers applied for relief grants from various sources during the pandemic. Generally during the pandemic, there was a sense of turmoil in the performing arts industry and most particularly in the dance world, the hardest hit of all performing art forms.